


Timeslip

by Anonymous



Series: The Hardest Thing [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 06, Buffy/Spike UST, Case Fic, Community: spook_me, Dinosaurs, F/F, F/M, Gen, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon, Xander/Dawn Ship Tease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-19 20:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8223157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Three months after Spike saves her at the top of Glory's rickety tower, Dawn finds herself in trouble again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Spook Me](http://spook-me.livejournal.com/) 2016 prompts: dinosaur & [these images](http://imgur.com/a/5jmlT).

That night found the town of Sunnydale, California as quiet as a grave--except not a Sunnydale grave, because those actually tended to be fairly lively. In fact, that liveliness was just the reason Buffy Summers, an otherwise bright and vivacious California blonde, found herself out after dark in the middle of a cemetery, ducking to avoid the swing of a newly-risen vampire's fist.

"Look out!" Spike's warning broke through Buffy's concentration, and she glanced to her right just in time to see another vamp coming. It wasn't anywhere near her yet, but it _was_ currently sprinting cheetah-like in her direction; she watched out of the corner of her eye as Spike barreled into it, knocking it from its path toward her, and her attention returned to the fashion fiasco still flailing at her head. She couldn't help the distinct feeling that she was being assaulted by all the worst fashion of the nineties combined, and how was she supposed to pick just one thing to snark about when she dusted this guy?

Windbreaker, she decided finally. For all the mullet deserved her scorn, the toxic orange windbreaker was an abomination. And it wasn't even jacket weather. "Any last words?" she asked, stake at the ready.

The vampire narrowed his eyes at her, clearly unwilling to believe that the fight would be over so soon. (They always thought they stood a chance, didn't they?) But Buffy's body was already coiled and ready to spring; she wanted this over as quickly as possible--mostly because she had better things to do than fight fledglings, but also because she wanted to see every horrifying bit of his ensemble explode into harmless brown dust. "I'm not the one who should be speaking their last words, Slayer."

Buffy just rolled her eyes. "Alright, then. Here are mine." She uncoiled, striking faster than the vampire could react, and buried the stake into his heart. "You look like a traffic cone."

He actually looked offended as he disintegrated, and Buffy would've stretched for some more snark if Spike hadn't still been fighting. She turned, his violently platinum hair drawing her eyes immediately to where he was busy grappling with the vamp he'd tackled earlier. Spike was clearly winning, but as per usual, he seemed to be taking his sweet time about it, wringing every last drop of fight out of his opponent before he finally put them out of their misery.

She watched them for a moment before she bothered to interrupt. This was probably the only fun Spike got to have these days, after all, so maybe…

Buffy shook her head. That was stupid, and this was wasting her time. She actually wanted to get some sleep tonight, and if Spike needed to work out his issues on some vamp's face, he could do that on his own time.

She moved forward with the swiftness of a wildcat--or at least a very experienced Slayer--and was behind the other vampire before either of them noticed her. And when his corpse burst into a cloud of debris in the space between them, she could see Spike scowling at her on the other side.

"What'd you go and do that for?" he demanded. "I had him."

"And I don't have all night. We're done here, Spike."

"Got someplace to be, Slayer?"

"Yes," she answered pointedly. "My _bed_." She paused a moment, waiting to see if the perverted insinuation she was expecting came, and she had to admit she was a bit impressed when it actually didn't. "Look, we can finish patrolling here, but I don't think we're gonna find much else."

Spike shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his leather coat, and made a gesture with his shoulders that clearly meant "lead the way". Buffy gave him a quick nod, and the two of them fell into step beside each other. They strolled through the graveyard with all the nonchalance of fighters who'd done this a thousand times before, and if there'd been a living soul to see them, they would've just looked like a couple out for a particularly morbid, creepy date. Which, considering it was Spike, was probably just the kind of date he'd really take a girl on.

If he weren't sexually obsessed with Buffy herself, of course.

Minutes ticked past slowly, slipping by in silence. Buffy didn't want to be the first to speak, not when she didn't have anything to say in the first place, and Spike, for whatever reason, seemed just as untalkative tonight. Not that she minded; if anything, she was rather glad.

Their relationship had been… _different_ this summer. Three months had passed since the death of Glory--or Glorificus, if you happened to worship her (or "that skanky hell-god", if you didn't)--and things had gotten a bit... weird lately. Everything had been so chaotic in the months and weeks leading up to Glory's defeat that Buffy's own actions seemed foreign to her sometimes, as it they were the ill-conceived decisions of some other person who didn't mind screwing up her life. As if she weren't the one who had kissed Spike on the lips after he'd let himself be tortured rather than give up Dawn. As if it were some other Slayer who had tasked Spike above anyone else with protecting her little sister if the worst should happen to her. As it if were some other warm-blooded, sun-kissed human woman who had _bonded with Spike_ to the point of a baffling shade of friendship.

"I'm gonna miss this, you know," he said suddenly, interrupting her thoughts so abruptly that she actually jumped.

"Huh?"

"When you lot all go back to your lives."

Buffy stared at him blankly, finding herself utterly unable to follow whatever strange path his mind had taken when his mouth had stopped running. "I'm sorry, what?"

Spike huffed, coming to a dead stop as unexpectedly as he'd spoken, and Buffy halted at his side. "You and me? Patrolling? We've been out here almost every night this summer, and the days aren't getting any longer."

"So?"

" _So_ ," Spike continued, voice as slow and deliberate as if he thought he was talking to an imbecile, "you won't be all-Slayer all the the time for much longer."

Buffy blinked. "And... that affects you how?"

Spike had a visibly uncomfortable look on his ~~chiseled~~ face now, and Buffy was fairly sure he regretted saying anything in the first place. "Well, this is the only real fun I get, innit?" he asked, shifting slightly. His posture had grown ever so slightly more defensive, and the change was so subtle that Buffy was surprised she noticed it at all. (How much time _had_ she been spending with him this summer, she wondered?) "Once you good little kiddies all get back on the school bus, I'll need to find myself some other entertainment, won't I?"

"That's really not my problem," Buffy reminded him, then hesitated. The words had come out a bit colder than she'd planned (perhaps even a bit colder than he deserved), and the way he stiffened even further at her rejection actually earned him a hint of guilt. He had proved himself to her, after all, hadn't he? Perhaps not as surely as the other Scoobies had--not as surely as Angel had--but more than Riley, at the very least. She had trusted him, after all, with the two things most important to her: her mother and her sister's lives. Joyce was gone now (through no fault of anyone but modern medicine), but Spike had saved Dawn. _He_ had been the one to protect her on top of that tower; if he hadn't killed the demon that'd been planning to bleed Dawn up there, Buffy would have lost her sister forever. Buffy owed Dawn's life--the crux of Buffy's happiness--to him, and perhaps he did deserve a bit more consideration than she sometimes remembered to give him.

"I'm still going to patrol," she tried instead in a much warmer voice. For the briefest instant, the idea of reaching out to touch him--a reassuring pat on the arm or something--flashed across her mind, but she dismissed it quickly. Being friendly was one thing; that, though, was likely flirting a bit too much with danger. "Evil doesn't stop for education, after all."

"Yeah, well, life goes on and all that. I suppose we'll probably be facing down the barrel of another big nasty before too long; seems we get one or two a year 'round the Hellmouth. Should probably take the respite when it comes, I suppose, do something nice and boring before everything falls apart again, yeah?" He shrugged. "Though when you think about it, it's a right surprise you're out here in the first place. The rest of your little Scoobie gang has been spending the summer all cuddly, haven't they? The witches holed up in your house with nothing to do but each other--" ( _"Spike!"_ ) "--and the wanker planning his wedding and whatnot?"

She sighed, running a hand through her thick, blonde hair and trying to pretend she didn't see Spike's gaze following the movement. "Do you have a point in there?"

"I'm just saying, Slayer, you're all _living_. Your lives are all heading somewhere, changing. Red can't marry her girl, but I'm sure they'll be wanting some kind of serious commitment soon, and Anya'll probably be thinking about _babies_ this time next year. You and me, though, we'll still be here in this graveyard--only you'll be here a lot less than me."

"This is a really convoluted way of saying you're gonna get lonely."

He scowled like she'd actually offended him. "That's not what I'm saying."

"Then what _are_ you saying?" she asked, knowing that her exasperation was creeping into her voice and yet entirely unable to stop it.

"I'm saying that time means something different to me, is all. You've only got, what, eighty years, so you lot stop for nothing. Life goes on different for you than for me. You're changing, and I'm... stuck."

"Stuck?" she repeated. "What, like you think you're in a vampiric rut or something?"

The look Spike gave her was so skeptical that Buffy actually wondered what she'd said to earn it. "'Vampiric rut' doesn't conjuring quite the same image for me as it apparently does for you, Slayer, but I guess you've got the gist of the thing. I'm _stagnant_. You're not."

Buffy laughed. "There's always Giles. Giles' life won't be changing unless he comes down with a sudden case of mid-life crisis."

Spike rolled his eyes. "The ponce doesn't count. He's got that shop now, and he and that bird from England might still work it out. Might even head back 'cross the pond for her, now that his Slayer's all grown up."

It was a horrible thought, so of course it had occurred to Spike. Giles wouldn't _leave_ her; he was practically her dad. "Look, Spike, I get that it's hard being the only Undead American in the group, but it's not like you don't _like_ being the outsider. Besides, it's a good thing that everything's back to normal. I'm amazed we even made it through Glory, let alone got back to living actual lives."

Spike hesitated a moment, then shrugged, appearing to cut his losses. The conversation clearly hadn't gone where he'd hoped it would. "Fair enough. How is the niblet, at that? Haven't seen much of her of late; locking her up tight these days, I take it? Or nights, if you'd rather?"

"I don't lock her up," Buffy protested, barely appeased by the thought that Spike probably meant it metaphorically. "Well, I mean, I lock the doors when I leave, but that's just called being responsible. It's not like I've chained her to her bed or something." Buffy very purposefully ignored the way Spike raised a single, scarred brow at her choice of expression. "You haven't been coming around the house as much--and thanks for dialing back the stalking, by the way--so of course you haven't seen her."

Spike gave her a little smirk. "What, not ready to make Slaying the family business yet?" he asked. "Didn't those monks create her from your blood or something like that? Might have some Slayer mojo in her you haven't tapped or summat."

"That is the last thing I want Dawn doing with her life, Spike. And after everything that happened to her, I'm sure she feels the same."

"Please. Growing up in the shadow of a big sis like you? I'd wager she dreams about handing that Hell Bitch her arse." He paused. "She's okay, though? Handling things?" 

"She could probably use a therapist," Buffy admitted, "but so could the rest of us. She's not falling apart, at least, and that's the most anyone can really ask for."

Spike nodded. "Good. That's... good." Buffy watched him pull out a box of cigarettes and frowned as he pulled one out of the carton. He brought it to his lips as he shoved the little box back into his coat and started fishing for his lighter; it was with a certain relief that she watched him frown and look down. "You seen my clipper?"

"Your what now?"

"Lighter's gone!" He glanced back in the direction they'd come. "Must've dropped it."

"Buy a new one?"

Spike barely seemed to hear her, squinting as he peered into the distant dark. "Nicked that off a girl I killed for Dru way back when. It's important, that light."

"Then go look for it."

He cast a quick, disgruntled look in her direction, but even he seemed to realize that he didn't stand a chance of roping her into searching the graveyard for a lost cigarette lighter. "Fine. Toddle off to bed, Slayer, and make sure you say hi to the bit for me. Let her know she can drop by my crypt any time she likes."

Buffy scoffed. As if she'd ever say that to Dawn. "Good luck with your cancer sticks," she said, turning to go. "Try not to smoke them around anyone that's living."

"Yeah, yeah," Spike grumbled, and off he went in the opposite direction, his eyes trained on the ground as he retraced his steps.

* * *

Xander stared pityingly across the Magic Box's massive round table. He'd seen Dawn Summers bored often enough in the past to know that he'd rarely ever seen her quite _this_ bored, and he honestly couldn't blame her a bit. Despite how excited Anya clearly was about this latest and most riveting game of Operation, Dawn was slouching in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest and her features affixed in an ever-present scowl. She kept rolling her eyes in that teenage way Xander remembered so well, and Anya was, luckily, either failing to spot it or refusing to point it out.

"Ha!" Anya crowed as Xander's hand jostled just enough for the tweezers to touch the metal and set off the buzzer. "That breadbasket's a real killer, isn't it?" She gave Dawn an unnecessarily significant look, as if expecting the younger woman to join in. Dawn didn't so much as twitch, but that certainly wasn't going to be enough to stop Anya now. "My turn!"

Xander watched disinterestedly as his fiance carefully extracted the piece of plastic that had bested him, and as she turned to him with a look of triumphant thrill and threw up her hands to high-five him, he could at least muster up enough energy to be relieved that the game was over. "Great job, honey," he offered, knowing that there wasn't any real point in putting much effort toward sincerity; Anya wouldn't notice the difference anyway. His hands met hers with a dull smack.

Anya's voice, however, was nothing but genuine. "Thank you, Xander!" She turned back to Dawn with a wide smile and joyfully glittering eyes. (And Xander had to admit it: she looked even more beautiful when she was this enthusiastic.) "Wasn't that fun?"

"Buckets," came the dry response.

"I thought so, too." Anya spoke with all the faux-gravity of an indulgent grade school teacher, and Dawn rolled her eyes again. "And you're being a very gracious loser. That's almost as valuable as winning!"

"Thanks."

"You're welcome!" As usual, there was no indication that Anya had noticed Dawn's barely-masked sarcasm. "Now, did you finish all your homework?" Dawn raised a brow, skeptical, then nodded silently. "Good. And we've finished our friendship-strengthening board game, so now it's time for me and Xander to have some grown-up time."

Xander jumped in his chair. "Wait, what?" _("Ew," Dawn muttered.)_

"Not like that, Xander," Anya scolded, as if he were the one who'd said something ridiculous. "Gross. I meant _wedding planning_. I'm going to go get my wedding planner because you and I have a few more details to hash out tonight if we plan to stay on schedule. As for Dawnie, I have a series of educational crossword puzzles to keep her entertained and learning."

"That sounds _great_."

"Of course it does," Anya said. She pushed her chair backward, the wooden legs scraping over the Magic Box's tile flooring, and stood. Her skirts swirled around her, and Xander could see the faint outline of her legs through the semi-sheer fabric. "Now, while I go get my stuff, you two should clean up the game. I'll need an empty table when I come back!"

Her heels clicked as she strode from the room, and Xander sighed heavily once he was absolutely sure she'd gone. "Sorry about that," he said. It was the first time he'd been alone with Dawn all evening. "I know this isn't what you wanted to do with your Saturday night."

The young woman just shrugged, still slouched and sullen in her seat. "Whatever. Willow and Tara wanted some alone time, so here I am; no big. I'm not sure why I can't stay _alone_ , but..."

"Aw, the Buffster's just overprotective of you these days. And after everything that happened, you can't really blame her."

For a moment, Xander faltered, wondering if he'd just put his foot so far in his mouth that he could kick his own butt with it. Dawn, though, didn't seem particularly disturbed by the reminder of Glory; if anything, she actually seemed to be coming out of her funk. "'Course I can," she said, sitting up slightly. "I can still do it even if it's not fair." She ran a hand through her hair, long and straight and mousy brown (and honestly pretty close to how Willow's used to be), and let the strands fall back down against her cheeks. "But I'm fifteen. Buffy was the Slayer at that age, and I can't even stay home without a sitter for one night? Come on."

"Well, you know how your sister feels. After everything that happened with your mom--" _Oh god, he just did it again._

This time, Dawn seemed a bit disturbed by the reminder, and there was an awkward moment when neither of them seemed confident enough to speak. Finally--

"Fine," Dawn said, more than a hint of bitter resolve in the word, "but I hope she realizes I won't put up with this when school starts. I'm going to be a sophomore, and she's not killing my social life again this year." Xander opted for tact this time and choose not to point out that it was really Glory who ruined Dawn's social life last year, not Buffy. Instead, he watched in silence as she swept the various Operation "ailments" into her palm and dropped them into the game's box. The board itself followed a moment later, and she crammed the top back on the box with a certain disdainful finality.

As she stood up from the table with the game box in hand, Xander joined her, and he followed her across the room to the shelf where the games were stored. Dawn shoved the thing back in its place, and then she turned back to him and crossed her arms once more. "So, wedding planning. How's _that_?"

"It's... daunting. But nothing the Xan-Man can't handle."

Dawn scoffed. "I don't understand why you're getting married in the first place."

Well, he had no idea how to respond to _that_. "It's just a thing people do."

"But why Anya?"

Xander wasn't sure why his heart skipped the way it did at the sound of that question, but he knew the answer. "Because I love her."

The look Dawn gave him was so skeptical that Xander was actually a bit concerned. _(Didn't he act like he loved Anya? Was Dawn jealous? Oh god, did Dawn have a crush on him again? It would be kind of flattering, but--)_ "Why?"

"I..." He came up short. "I just do. Feelings can be, you know, hard to explain sometimes."

" _She's_ hard to explain sometimes."

"Maybe that's why I love her?"

Dawn shook her head. "No, come on. It's never made any sense." _(How the hell did they get onto this topic, Xander wondered.)_ "You like alpha women. Buffy, Cordelia, _Faith_. You're not into... well, whatever type Anya is."

Xander had the oddest sense of déjà vu; this was Willow's freak-out over Cordelia all over again. "Of course I am! A guy can have more than one type. What's wrong with Anya?"

"Nothing's wrong with her," Dawn answered, and Xander had to admit that he found the sentiment charitable. "I just don't think you guys are right for each other."

Dawn had looked away by then, turning her attention back to the shelves. There was a box sitting at the very top, unopened and obviously recently mailed. Xander watched mutely as Dawn reached up to take it, an idly curious expression on her face. Xander considered pointing out that she probably wasn't supposed to be touching Giles' mail--or anything in the Magic Box, for that matter--but somehow he didn't feel like opening up that particular can of worms right now. Anya could deal with it when she got back. (And where the hell was she, by the way? Surely grabbing a few binders didn't really take so long?)

"Why not?" Xander tried again. "I think--I mean--we feel right for each other."

"Ew," Dawn repeated. She set the box down on a lower shelf and started picking at the tape holding it shut. "Besides, feelings aren't a good enough reason to get married."

"They're not?"

"My mom and dad had feelings for each other when they got married. Look how that turned out. Two kids, dead mom, dead _beat_ dad."

"That won't happen to us."

"I'm sure they would've said the same." The tape tore open, and Dawn pulled the cardboard flaps back so she could peer into the box. "Huh."

"We won't turn out like your mom and dad, Dawn." _Or like his._

Dawn didn't answer; she reached into the box--and Xander was knocked off his feet.

* * *

Behind the building, Anya was busy searching her car for a single, infuriatingly missing binder and wholly oblivious to what had just happened inside.

Xander and Dawn were nowhere to be found. The room was empty, in fact, save for two unfamiliar creatures. Short, birdlike, and bestial, they were as frightened as they were confused, and fear made them all the more dangerous. Were they not a mated pair, their sudden and extreme stress might have turned them on each other; but as things were, they merely wished to escape this strange new environment.

The larger of the two started forward, testing his claws against the strange, smooth rock beneath his feet. It was firm beneath him but not particularly rock-like after all; he didn't know what to make of it, but it was good enough for running.

He charged the window and burst through, glass shattering onto the sidewalk where he now found himself.

Cautiously, the slightly smaller female followed him, stepping cautiously out of the shattered window and into the night air. They shared a look, and then they both took off at a run down the street.


	2. Chapter 2

Xander and Dawn toppled at the same time. Dawn collapsed onto her side in the dirt, her body curled up until she was almost in the fetal position. Xander was on his hands and knees at her side, terrified and confused by whatever had just happened. It felt like his senses had all gone silent for a single horrifying instant, and now that they had returned, he had the distinct impression of familiar ground having been abruptly pulled out from beneath him. 

...which might have been accurate, really, considering he now found himself staring down at a plain of mossy dirt quite unlike the Magic Box's floor.

"Dawn?" he managed to croak. He scuttled toward her to help her up, and she looked just as petrified as he felt. 

"What happened?" She stared up at him, eyes wide with a fear that made her look even younger than she was. It was a trait she shared with (or perhaps got from) her sister; vulnerability had always made Buffy look more childlike and innocent than she really was.

"I don't know," he answered, pulling her with him as he climbed to his feet. He let her go when he was sure she was steady, and for several minutes there was only silence between them as they surveyed their strange new surroundings with distrustful eyes. 

They were quite clearly _very_ far from Giles' shop--and, no doubt, somewhere far from Sunnydale itself.

The world around them was a phenomenal palette of rich green, earthy brown, and scattered splotches of red and pink and yellow. Massive trees stretched further up than he could see, their thick, green canopies blocking out the sky except for where rays of golden sunlight streamed through to illuminate them far below.

The place, wherever it may be, was humid, more muggy than anything Xander had suffered before, and he could already feel a thin layer of sweat building on his body as it refused to evaporate into the water-dense air. Dawn's sleek hair was frizzing before his eyes, and he wiped at his brow as he listened to an unfamiliar animal cry somewhere in the distance. Its voice joined a chorus of other sounds all competing to be the star of nature's symphony, from the droning of unknown insects and incessantly dripping water to nearby squeaking and far-off, ominous screeches.

This was a jungle, an honest-to-god rainforest, and Xander didn't know how they had gotten there, how they were supposed to get home, or how the _hell_ he was supposed to figure out the answer to either of those questions.

"Well..." he started, uncertain. "At least we're both okay, right?" 

Dawn gave him a fierce look. "We are not okay, Xander. We're in a forest! How did we get in a forest!?" 

"I promise I have no idea." He glanced at her. "Did you touch anything in the Magic Box?" 

"This isn't my fault!" she protested, her voice rising into a slightly shriller pitch, and Xander threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. 

"Not blaming you," he said. "Just trying to figure out what happened. If you can remember anything, it could be an important clue."

Dawn looked hesitant, as if she still expected Xander to pin the blame on her shoulders. But after another moment, she seemed to decide their was no harm in honesty. "Well, I opened that box in the magic shop," she reminded him. "It didn't look dangerous! ...but I guess sometimes you can't tell in a place like that. Do you really think this is something I did?"

The poor girl looked like an honest yes might crush her, so Xander restrained himself. "I don't know what to think yet," he offered instead. "We don't even know where we are. That's what we better figure out first. We can work on how to get back later; or, with any luck, Buffy will figure it out for us."

"How can she?" Dawn asked. "Do you think there will be some kind of clue in the Magic Box? I certainly don't see any here."

"Well, if you _did_ open up a box of whammy, I'm sure Giles will be able to put two and two together. Just like always. But right now you and I need to focus on ourselves. We don't know where we are and we don't know how long you're going to be here--"

"We know we're in a jungle." 

It was only her obvious sincerity that helped Xander keep his sarcasm in check. She was obviously trying to help; no sense in hurting her feelings. "Which one, though? This can't be America, so we don't even know what continent we're on."

"Then what do we do, Xander?"

"I think we should explore a little bit. Maybe look for some shelter, some food, fresh water... Things we're going to need if they don't find us very quickly."

Dawn's eyes widened just a fraction. "Do you really think we're going to be here that long?"

"I think we should prepare for the worst and hope for the best."

"Is this military guy speaking?"

Xander smiled. 'Military guy' hadn't spoken much these past few years; it was nice to know someone even remembered. "Could be," he admitted. "Or it could just be common-sense, wants-to-live guy. Either way, I think it's our best bet."

Dawn nodded, though she still didn't look particularly pleased about it, and Xander reached out for her hand. Without hesitating, hers reached out to accept his offering, and her fingers squeezed him tight for a moment. He squeezed back reassuringly; he didn't plan to let _anything_ happen to her.

She let Xander lead the way as they trudged along. It was tough going, trying to navigate this unfamiliar landscape. The underbrush was thick and difficult to maneuver through at times, and there were roots everywhere, poking up through the muddy ground to trip them if they weren't paying close enough attention. They could hear the rush of water in the distance, but even as they tried to follow it back to its source, the sound never seem to be any closer.

They walked like that for miles, making slow progress, and as time ticked past, they didn't seem any closer to figuring out where they were or what they were going to do. There was no obvious food source to be seen, and no water beyond muddy puddles they weren't yet thirsty enough to imagine drinking. Luckily, they were in a rainforest rather than a more familiar Californian desert, and so they at least had a good reason to expect rain would be coming sometime soon. And Xander was confident that he'd be able to build them a shelter, should it come to that.

But perhaps their best luck was that they hadn't come across any other animals. Though the lack of prey species was a bit of a disappointment (Xander had hoped to hunt for food as a last resort, but they were going to have a hard time killing anything they couldn't even _find_ ), the absence of any predators was a stroke of luck he couldn't have been more grateful for. If something decided they were on the menu, Xander didn't have the slightest idea of how to fight it off.

And so it went on for one hour, and then two, and then three. Finally, after Dawn had started lagging behind him, she came to a full stop and turned unhappy eyes toward Xander. "Are you ready to stop yet?" she asked, her own answer obvious in her tone.

He shook his head. She wouldn't like it, but they were very far from done for the day. "We should definitely find a place to hunker down soon," he told her, "but I'd still like to go a little bit further. What we're looking for could be just over there; no sense stopping until we actually need to stop."

"Well, we have to stop sometime," she grumbled, face sinking into a scowl. Xander didn't think she was mad at _him_ so much as she was furious with the situation, but still, he couldn't help the wave of anxiety that had begun to stiffen his shoulders. This was the reason he didn't like being the leader: too much pressure. Too many chances to let everyone down. "My feet hurt," she went on. "We've been walking for hours, and we don't know where we're going or when--if _ever_ \--we're going to get there. And what happens when it gets dark? When _will_ it get dark?"

"I don't know," Xander admitted, shifting uncomfortably. Their hands had long since parted. "But we should definitely have a shelter built before them. We'll probably need... I don't know, two hours for that? Three? Maybe more. I'm a carpenter; I don't really work with vines."

It was a lame joke, and so he didn't expect her to laugh. She didn't. "So we're just gonna keep walking?"

"For a bit. If you can."

Dawn certainly didn't look like she wanted to do it, but after a moment, she gave him a very noncommittal shrug and started walking forward again with her arms crossed stiffly over her chest. She was sulking, as she so often did, and Xander couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for her. He and Willow and the rest of the Scoobies, at least, had chosen--more or less freely--to join Buffy on the spookier side of things. Dawn, though, had never been given a choice, what with being the Slayer's sister and, you know, a super-powered energy blob for eons before that. (Life on the Hellmouth was weird.)

So even if this was her fault (and he was inclined to believe it), he couldn't even hold it against her. She was just a kid, after all, and if want like he could pretend he'd never caused any magical mishaps at her age. (Love spells, anyone?) At least Dawn hadn't done it on purpose. 

They had only made it about three or four minutes' distance away from where they started when Xander found himself once again abruptly colliding with the ground. Face-first, this time.

Dawn was on her knees beside him immediately, every trace of her earlier frustration gone. Concern had captured her features instead, and he grimaced as he let her pull him back to his feet. 

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He tried to ignore the familiar, oppressive feeling of embarrassment as he dusted himself off and peered down at the now-ruined knees of his jeans. "What the heck tripped me?" 

"Not me," Dawn answered quickly. Why she felt the need to disclaim herself from everything that went wrong, he had no idea.

He glanced behind him, glaring down at the spot that had gotten the better of him... And then his stomach did a somersault as his eyes traced the outline in the mud.

It was a footprint. He had tripped over the indent of a huge footprint, one that couldn't have been mistaken for a human's no matter how hard he tried. His first thought, in fact, was that he was looking at the reptilian footprint of a crocodile, but he had the horrible suspicion that even a crocodile wouldn't have a footprint anywhere near as big as the one he was looking at. And that left one thought in his head: demon. 

He glanced back at Dawn, wondering if he should risk a panic by pointing it out to her; but if the horrified look on her face was any indication, her mind was already exactly where his was at the moment. "That's not good," she said warily, and though it was an obvious sentiment, he couldn't possibly disagree. 

"Now we should definitely keep moving," he said, taking hold of her hand once more in a way that he hoped left no room for argument. 

She nodded again, much more enthusiastically this time, and the two of them took off once more. They walked briskly, going as fast as possible through the thick jungle without quite daring to break into a run. If whatever had left that massive footprint was still around, the last thing they needed to was to entice it into chasing them.

With his anxiety building and the looming trees growing more oppressive as the fear and worry compounded in his thoughts, Xander couldn't have been more relieved when he finally glimpsed the clearing. It was a massive brightness, unfocused and almost blinding in the distance after so long in the dimly lit forest, and from the way Dawn's grip on his hand tightened excitedly, she too was thrilled at the prospect of escaping the trees.

They had fifty yards to go, and they couldn't seem to stop themselves from speeding up, eager beyond belief to step into the sunlight. Forty yards, and they were at a jog. Thirty, they were almost sprinting, and a glance in Dawn's direction showed Xander that she was smiling from relief.

Twenty yards.

Ten yards.

And then they broke into the clearing.

Xander's grip clamped like a vice down onto Dawn's hand as he came to an abrupt stop in the long grass of an unfamiliar meadow. Dawn made a weak, horrified sound at his side, her eyes wide and transfixed upon the nightmare standing just a few yards away.

The Tyrannosaurus let out a noise somewhere between a lion's roar and the screech of some massive bird, and Xander would never be ashamed to admit that in that instant, there was only one very simple thought on his mind.

 _Run_.

* * *

Sunnydale was dark, or as dark as a populated suburban area ever got. As the two creatures walked through the streets, their eyes turned to the streetlights in animalistic curiosity. It was the first time the things had seen artificial light, after all, and neither was sure what to make of it. It wasn't sunlight, nor the moon, nor the distant and tiny stars. But it didn't seem to be fire, either, and so they were not afraid to pass through the illumination as they got their bearings and began to stalk their prey.

* * *

Barry Higgins had never been a particularly lucky man, nor a wise one. While the residents of the various Hellmouths of the world had (for the most part) long since learned the dangers of talking to strangers, inviting unexpected guests into their homes, and _especially_ traveling by foot after dark, Barry's self-preservation instinct was, compared to everyone else, severely lacking. But it hadn't gotten him killed so far.

All he wanted to do tonight was go home. He'd been roped into working the late shift at the warehouse, and it was a job he'd always hated. The warehouse was much too creepy for his tastes after dark, and he'd always felt ill-at-ease in that part of town to begin with. But he needed the money, so he couldn't have told his boss no regardless of how much he'd wanted to, and so now he found himself all but tiptoeing down the sidewalk as he tried to shake off the eerie impression that someone was following him.

Because it was a ridiculous thought, right? Sunnydale's crime rate actually wasn't that bad, if you looked at it a certain way. There weren't many robberies, after all, not like the cities where he'd lived in the past. People were rarely mugged here, homes were almost never broken into, and businesses were held up only once in a blue moon. The big problem with Sunnydale, of course, was the murders and disappearances, and as far as the news seemed to be concerned, that was the fault of drugs and gangs. (Probably cocaine and Mexicans, if you asked Barry.)

(…no one ever asked Barry.)

Anyway, Barry figured he was just being paranoid. Gangs didn't stalk people, as far as he knew; they didn't have that kind of subtlety. So if Barry had the feeling that someone--maybe two or three people at the absolute most--was following him, it must be his imagination, right? Gangs didn't work that way; serial killers did. And Sunnydale had never been hit with a serial killer problem.

Nervously, Barry cast another glance over his shoulder, eyes peering almost blindly into the dimly lit street behind him. No matter how he tried to logic himself out of this, he still felt as if he was being tracked. He couldn't wait until he was home, safely locked up for the night, and he definitely didn't plan on answering the door for any--

\--something slammed into him from the side, and Barry toppled to the ground as what felt like two rows of knives held together by a powerful vice sank into his right arm. Pain and shock tore a scream from his lungs, and the last thing he saw was a flash of black and green feathers as a second attacker's jaws sank into the soft flesh of his neck.

* * *

Buffy yawned as she stepped into the Magic Box. It was one of those wide, consuming yawns, the kind that meant Buffy couldn't help but screw her eyes shut and put sound to her exhaustion. She rolled her neck, wary of the tightening in her muscles, and the bell of the Magic Box's front door rang as the door snapped shut behind her.

Mustering up all the fake enthusiasm she could, Buffy headed toward the table at the back of the room, where she expected Dawn was. With any luck, she'd actually done some work on her summer project tonight instead of letting it languish in the realm of procrastination and impending failure for yet another day. (Not that Buffy could blame her if she hadn't finished it yet; if there was one thing in the way of education that Buffy still hated even now that she was in college, it was homework.)

But her face fell in an instant, false brightness vanishing the moment Buffy realized exactly what she was looking at.

Anya stood behind the counter, eyes wide and panicky as she held the shop's phone to her ear. She was bouncing on her heels like she had more energy to burn than she knew what to do with, and nothing about the sight of her--nor the apparent absence of Xander and Dawn--managed to settle Buffy's suddenly riled nerves.

"Anya?" she asked, listening close to hear if there was actually anyone on the other side of the ex-demon's call. She couldn't hear a voice--neither Xander's nor Dawn's nor anyone else's. "Where's Dawn?"

"I'd love to tell you, Buffy," Anya said, her voice terse and unfriendly from obvious stress. "But Xander's not picking up his phone, and he didn't have the decency to leave a note, the bastard. Is asking for help to plan this wedding really so terrible?"

Buffy stared. "I'm sorry, Xander left because he didn't want to help plan your wedding?"

"Do you see him here?"

She didn't have time for this. "He wouldn't have just taken off with Dawn. Are you sure he didn't leave a note or anything? Have you called your place?"

"Of course."

"What about mine? Maybe he took Dawn home to wait for me."

"No one's there, either," Anya said cooly, "unless he's just hiding from my call. I left a message on your machine, so he'd definitely know it was me." She shook her head, lowering the phone and all but slamming it back down into its cradle. "But look at what he did to the window on the way out. He's doing this to spite me, clearly."

Buffy turned, and with a certain sinking feeling in her gut, she noticed the front window for the first time.

On the side of the door opposite of the direction from which she'd come, the massive pane of glass had been shattered. Only jagged shards remained where the window once was, the rest of it scattered onto the sidewalk beyond. Buffy's heart skipped, and she turned her angry gaze back to Anya.

"When did you last see them?"

"Hours ago," Anya said, and the fact that she sounded more sulky than concerned did nothing to appease Buffy's fury. "I've been trying to get ahold of him ever since." 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you don't carry a phone, and why would I waste time searching graveyards?"

Buffy huffed, tossing her head in a dismissive and obviously frustrated gesture. "This is serious, Anya! Do you have any idea what could have happened to them?"

It was meant as an accusation, but the ex-demon seemed to take it as a genuine question. "Anything," she admitted readily, and Buffy searched her expression for a single sign of recognizable worry. "Look at the window; something probably grabbed them."

"Then why aren't you freaking out?" She paused. "Wait, I thought you said Xander did that to spite you."

Much to Buffy's surprise, Anya's mask of indifference broke in an instant; now, she seemed downright offended. "I _am_ freaking out," Anya answered, voice rising slightly. "Do I look calm to you? Of course Xander didn't really do that to the window; I'm talking out of my ass because I'm panicking! So do your Slayer thing and figure out what happened to them!"

Buffy stared at her a moment longer, then shook her head. It wasn't worth arguing with Anya; it never was. "Okay, then. What do you know?"

"Nothing," she answered flatly. "One minute, they were here; the next, they were gone and the storefront was in shambles. I'm guessing something broke in. And possibly ate them."

There was no way she'd be rising to _that_ bait. Instead, Buffy turned toward the window. "No, look at the glass. It's all on the sidewalk; something broke out, not in."

"So what?"

"I don't know yet," Buffy snapped. "Maybe they were running from something. Maybe… I don't know, maybe they summoned something and it broke out? And they chased it? I don't know. But whatever it was, that glass is our only clue unless you've got something else to say." She paused just a moment, not remotely expecting Anya to offer anything else. "Alright, then I'm going back out there to see if I can track… anything. Anya, you call everybody and let them know what's up. Xander and Dawn are missing, so we need to get on top of this as quickly as possible."

Finally, Anya seemed to engage. She nodded eagerly, already lifting the phone back to her ear. Apparently, all she had needed was a goal. "Alright. I'll get Giles first, then Willow and Tara?"

Buffy nodded. "And make sure you get Spike. If it comes down to a fight, we'll definitely need him."

She turned and marched to the door of the Magic Box, her eyes on the shattered glass. The bell tinkled as the door swung open, and she marched back out into the night with a newfound determination.

Time to rescue Dawn again.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time the two of them finally stopped running, both Dawn and Xander were so out of breath that they were each near to collapsing, their lungs bursting with lack of oxygen. Dawn rested her back against a tree as she took in massive gulps of air, her face red and splotchy from crying. Xander was a few feet away, once again on his knees in the dirt; but this time, his stomach was heaving from both shock and the stress he'd just put on his body.

They had run like their lives depended on it, and Xander was completely convinced that they _had_. There wasn't a chance in hell that his eyes had been playing tricks on him, much as he wished he could think otherwise; they had just stumbled upon an honest-to-God, in-the-flesh Tyrannosaurus.

A motherfucking _dinosaur_.

"Did you--" Dawn finally managed to get out in between gasps, "--see what I saw? Was that a--?"

"It was," Xander answered, wiping his mouth. His stomach roiled, but nothing had come up purely because he hadn't eaten in hours. Now he was torn between wishing he'd eaten (because he had a bad feeling it would've been the last meal he'd be getting for a while) and being thankful that he hadn't (because seeing his last good meal splattered on the ground of a prehistoric jungle would've done nothing for his morale).

Dawn moaned, horrified, and Xander watched her start crying again. Unsteadily, he rose to his feet and staggered over toward her; he didn't waste a moment in gathering her up into his arms and pulling her into a tight hug. She all but collapsed against him, burying her face into his chest as she cried, and he held her for a few minutes as her slim body was wracked with sobs.

When she finally pulled back, she was sniffling and scowling and clearly embarrassed with herself. "This is unbelievable," she hissed, and though Xander could tell she wasn't angry at him, he hated to see her like this in the first place. "After everything we went through this year, we're going to die from being eaten by _dinosaurs_? Why is my life so unfair?"

"We're not gonna be eaten," he assured her, though even he knew it wasn't much consolation. "It didn't follow us, and we haven't seen anything else around. We'll be fine."

"No we won't," she snapped, nudging herself free of his arms and turning her back on him. "We didn't just get transported to another country, Xander! We're in the past!"

He just barely resisted the urge to say, "I noticed." Instead, he opted for something a bit more diplomatic. "Well, maybe it's not so bad. You're the Key, right? Maybe since we, you know, time travelled instead of just teleported…?" Even as he said it, it sounded absurd. "Maybe there's something you can do?"

Dawn just glared at him. "I don't know how to do anything, Xander. I don't even know if I can, let alone how I would try! I'm _useless_." She groaned. "Why did those monks have to make me just another teenager? Why couldn't they have made me a second Slayer? Or a kick-ass witch like Willow?"

It was a good enough question, he had to give her that. "Don't say that. You're not useless, Dawn, and we won't get eaten, okay? Buffy will figure everything out. She always does."

Dawn was silent for a moment, and Xander hoped--at first--that it meant his words had calmed her. But a minute later, she looked up at him with an odd glint in her eye, and his hopes sank. "Why do you do that?" she demanded.

"What?"

"Rely on Buffy like that. Giles and Willow are the ones who normally figure things out. And if there's magic, it's usually up to Willow. And Buffy works with Spike a lot. Even Anya knows more about stuff like this than Buffy does."

Xander couldn't help but wonder if this was some kind of a trick question. "Well, Buffy's the Slayer. This stuff is kind of her job."

"So?"

"So she's the hero," he went on. "The rest of us help, but Buffy's the one who always saves the day." He paused, reconsidering. "Though I suppose Willow does her fair share of hero-ing, too."

Dawn narrowed her eyes slightly, and Xander had the distinct and uncomfortable impression that she was gearing up for an argument.

But she fell silent as a deep rumbling rolled through the jungle, and the ground beneath them quivered like a frightened child. Xander knew what it was; twenty-odd years of living in California had taught him to recognize a preshock when he felt one. "Just a earthquake," he found himself assuring Dawn even as he wracked his brain for any recollection of earthquakes that had happened since she'd been created. Had she felt one before? Surely she remembered having experienced them in the past, but had she actually felt one since the monks pulled a Pinocchio on her?

His idle musing was interrupted when he caught sight of the horrified look on Dawn's face. "It's not an earthquake," she breathed, her eyes just as wide and petrified as they had been back in the clearing. And even before he followed her gaze to confirm his worst fears, he knew why.

She was right; it hadn't been an earthquake at all. It had been _footsteps_.

Xander seized Dawn, pulling her behind the nearest tree, and craned his neck around the side of it just enough to peek.

Standing there, just watching them from half a football field away, was a second fucking dinosaur.

* * *

Buffy walked alone for a half-hour. She stalked the streets like a predator with a sense of singular determination; her eyes remained trained to the ground as she walked, focused intently upon following the trail she'd picked up. It wasn't much, but it was surely something; the street and the sidewalk had both been marked by the strangest series of scrapes. It looked like something--two somethings, in fact--had been running through Sunnydale like their lives had depended on it, massive claws digging through asphalt and cement as they ran.

But for as long as she'd been following that trail, she hadn't seen a single soul. Not a vampire, not a demon, not a monster, and not a single friggin' Scooby.

Until finally, she heard a familiar set of footsteps rushing up behind her.

"It's about time," she said, never breaking her gaze from the tracks.

Spike fell into step beside her. "Well, I got here as fast as I could. They came to get me last, you know? Already had their own little powwow before even bothering to tell me anything had happened."

"They're out searching, then?"

"The lot of 'em. Living up to their name, in fact, and wandering the town in pairs. Hope we're the ones to find the bastards, though. Can't imagine what demon girl and your Watcher are going to do if they come upon any nasties."

"Kill them, hopefully."

Spike scoffed. "I'd pay good money to see that." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him give her a genuinely concerned look. "Do you have any idea what happened? We're all sure the wanker didn't just decide to take her out for ice cream and lollipops without telling anyone, right?"

Buffy shook her head. "Xander wouldn't just run off with Dawn, not after everything that's happened. Besides, Anya said they'd been missing for a few hours. Something happened to them--the same something that happened to the front window of the Magic Box and our town's newly paved streets."

"Taxpayer's lament," Spike mumbled, eying the scratches in front of him. "I don't recognize the tracks, though. Pity they're running in the street and not the mud; all we're getting from this is that they've got claws."

"As long as we find them, I don't need to know what they are."

It wasn't the truest thing she'd ever said, of course, but it was a hope she would cling to for as long as she could. She really didn't want to think about what might happen if this turned out to be more than a simple demon attack; if there was some kind of new Apocalypse brewing, or a ritual these things were trying to get underway, that would mean research. And while she normally didn't mind, she was in no mood for it now; especially if it meant she couldn't bring Xander and Dawn back to safety until after they knew what they were up against.

Every wasted moment was another chance for them to die.

"Buffy!" Spike said suddenly, his voice so urgent that she finally tore her gaze from the ground. He was pointing a single, leather-clad arm ahead of them, and she winced as she spotted what he had.

About thirty feet away, there was a body lying on the sidewalk. From the distance, all she could tell was that it was male and it was white. Buffy broke into a run, pushing the thought of Xander to the very back of her mind.

The body was a wreck. As Buffy skidded to a halt in front of it and dropped onto her knees to check its pulse, she already knew it was a wasted effort. The man was obviously dead. _Extremely_ dead. He had been torn open like wrapping paper, his throat bitten clean through and his guts scattered about the sidewalk. Something had ripped him apart like a savage, and though Buffy wasn't the most familiar with internal human anatomy (because ew), even she could tell that there wasn't enough left of him for her to think anything but that he'd been partially eaten by his attackers.

It was easily the most disgusting thing Buffy had seen in a while, and yet the churning in her stomach wasn't at all for this dismantled stranger. The thought of Xander--and Dawn, too--had surged back to the front of her mind almost as soon as she was sure this corpse wasn't either of them, and all she could see in her mind's eye was their bodies, mangled just like this one.

As always, Spike seemed to know just what she was thinking. "We haven't seen any sign of them, Slayer. If whatever got to this poor blighter got to them, we'd have seen them scattered about by now."

Buffy nodded, rising to her feet. "Does this look familiar to you?" she asked idly, eyes scanning the pavement to pick back up the trail. "What kind of demon would do this?"

"None I recognize," he admitted, and her heart sank just a bit. "This is bestial. Most demons have at least a bit more finesse than this. Just a _bit_ , note, but still… Maybe a werewolf? Or--"

Buffy shushed him quickly, and he fell silent, eyes immediately searching for what had caught her attention.

Her eyes hadn't caught the tracks this time; the creatures, whatever they were, had apparently not launched back into a run after their snack, because there were no more deep grooves carved into the pavement or the sidewalk. But off to the right beyond the sidewalk, a large courtyard stretched out, and she could see two set of violent tracks disturbing the grass.

And then, about fifty yards away from her, just on the other side of a short wall of dark green shrubbery, she spotted them: two short, bipedal creatures unlike anything she'd ever seen. Monstrous and birdlike, they hadn't noticed her and Spike yet, and Buffy was feeling particularly eager to introduce herself.

It was only as she started to launch herself forward, ready to barrel over there at a run, that Spike's hand clamped down onto her arm and yanked her back. "What are you doing?" he demanded, his voice lowered to a stage whisper. "Are you out of your gourd?"

"What are _you_ doing?" she hissed back. "I'm going to go kill those things."

"Do you not realize what those are?"

Buffy hesitated. "What, you don't think we can take them? They're just demons."

Spike gave her a _look_ , one that somehow reminded her of a scolding teacher. Or Giles. "No, they're not. Those aren't demons."

They sure looked like it. "Then what are they?"

"They're raptors!"

Buffy laughed, a single loud burst of hilarity before Spike clamped his hand over her mouth, casting a furtive glance in the direction of the creatures. She shook her head free. "You're joking, right? Those aren't dinosaurs, Spike. That's stupid."

"Look at them, Buffy. Didn't they teach you about those things in school?"

"No," she said, "because my school didn't offer a paleontology elective. I saw Jurassic Park, though, and I'm fairly sure dinosaurs don't have feathers."

"Then you're wrong." He said it so bluntly that she actually had to pause for a moment, startled. "Look, those are velociraptors. You don't want to fight those. They're animals, not demons. Come back with a gun or something; you can't fight these things hand-to-hand."

Buffy peered uncertainly back at the creatures. The demons (the dinosaurs?) still hadn't noticed them, and she had the sinking feeling that it was because they were already over there eating something--or someone--else. She took a deep breath. "I can't let them just run off and kill more people, Spike. Whatever they are, they need to be put down. Now."

"No, not now. This is bonkers--those are _dinosaurs_. If ever you needed Captain Librarian, it's now."

Buffy stared at the things, considering her options. The longer she waited here, the more likely it was that they would notice her staring. She would loose the element of surprise if that happened, and that could tip the fight in their favor. But if Spike was right, the fight might need more preparation than she'd afforded it, so regrouping at the Magic Box might be the best option.

But what if Dawn and Xander were over there, dead or dying at this very moment? Could she really put off knowing for sure?

Trembling slightly-- _not Dawn, not Dawn **please**_ \--she finally drew in a shaky breath and nodded. "Okay. You're right. Maybe Giles can… maybe he'll know what to do."

Spike looked genuinely relieved, and he let her usher him away without another word. Buffy glanced backward over her shoulder as they left, once and then twice and then again until she could no longer see the strange creatures and their meal.

She just had to hope this wouldn't turn out to be a horrible mistake.

* * *

"Are you sure, Buffy?"

Willow's voice sounded skeptical to the point of actual concern for her best friend's sanity, and Buffy couldn't even blame her. She still didn't quite believe it herself, and there remained a lingering doubt in the back of her mind that maybe Spike was just a moron and of course they were only dealing with some kind of birdlike demon species after all.

"I… Well, no," she admitted. "But it sure looked like--"

"We're sure," Spike interrupted firmly. A glance in his direction confirmed that his expression was every bit as tense and confrontational as his tone, but Willow actually looked more affronted than cowed.

"You realize how crazy that is, though, right?" she pressed. "Don't you think it's more likely that--"

"No I bloody don't! After a hundred years of undeath, I think I know a demon when I see one."

"O-okay," Tara interrupted, her hand falling onto Willow's shoulder just as the redhead was about to open her mouth again. "Look, we can start researching. If there's some demon none of us know about, we might be able to find it that way. And if--" She spoke more quickly, trying to cut off Spike before he could interrupt. "--you're right about the, uh, dinosaurs… research can't hurt then, either. Right?"

She met Willow's eyes as she asked it, and the other witch seemed to sulk for a second before she finally nodded. "Yeah, sure. Research never hurts, especially when it comes to the weird."

The moment she said it, Giles was already up and moving, marching toward the back of the store and up the rickety staircase to the second level, where the darker and more potent books were kept. Anya rose a moment later--but her eyes weren't on him or the books he was after. Instead, she wore a concerned frown as she walked over to the shelves were the board games were stacked.

Buffy watched idly as she hesitated in front of the shelves, tilting her head like a confused puppy. Then, as Giles passed her by with a towering stack of heavy books in his arms, she reached out and snatched up a nondescript cardboard box.

"Giles?" she asked, glancing back to the table where the other Scoobies sat. Giles passed out his books in silence. "Giles?"

"Hmm?" He turned to her, flustered to realize he was being called.

"Did you open this?"

He furrowed his brow behind his glasses, almost dropping what was left of his pile as Spike very pointedly snatched a book from the top. "What?"

"This box," Anya said, more urgency in her voice as she lifted the box up for him to see. "Did you open it?"

"No, no, I--I don't think so. Does it matter?"

Anya frowned, all but glaring at the box. "Well, it's open, and I didn't do it. If you didn't do it, maybe Xander did. What is it?"

Giles set his stack down and started toward her. "Mail, I suppose."

Her frown turned to one of dissatisfaction, and Anya pulled back the top flaps of the box with a gingerness that Buffy didn't find at all warranted. But then her eyes widened as she peered inside, and Buffy's heart sank. Whatever Anya had just found, it couldn't be good.

"What's wrong?" Giles asked.

"What's wrong?" Anya repeated in a shrill tone of voice that could only have been warranted if she'd just found the Apocalypse waiting for her under her Christmas tree. "What's _wrong_? Look at what this is!" She thrust the open box toward him, and Giles leaned forward to peer inside while Buffy took a step closer to take a peek herself.

At the bottom of the box, there was a thick layer of velvety, dark brown cushioning, and in the center of it rested what looked like a rather gaudy necklace. The metal chain was sturdy and at the very least _colored_ gold, and from it hung a large circular medallion. It too was golden and intricately carved, and there lay a sizeable, glittering blue sapphire at its heart.

"It's a necklace."

Anya glared at her, snatching the box back. "It's not just a necklace!" She turned her accusing stare toward Giles. "Who's sending you this kind of mail?"

"Well, I don't know! But you recognize this piece of jewelry?"

"Of course I do!" Anya quickly slapped the box shut again and returned it to the shelves. Afterward, Buffy couldn't help but note the way she took up a space between them and it, as if she meant to guard it. From what, she didn't know. "That's a Chronos Medallion. If Xander or Dawn touched that, we're screwed."

"A Chronos medallion?" Willow's voice cut in. She shared a look with Tara. "Like the god, Chronos?" Buffy raised a brow. She'd had more than her fair share of gods messing with her sister, thank you very much. "The mythological kind, I mean. Not the from-another-dimension, wants-to-destroy-the-fabric-of-reality kind."

"Good."

Giles started toward Anya and the box, but an awkward shuffle from her made him pause, apparently catching on quite suddenly that she didn't plan to let him near it. "What do you know about this?"

"Not much," she admitted with a nervous glance backward. "It's got something to do with time travel, and that's never good. I don't know exactly what happens when you touch it or what kind of magic it is… but I think I've got a pretty good idea now."

Buffy felt her heart sink further. "You think Dawn and Xander accidentally used some kind of time magic?"

Anya shrugged. "If they touched this thing, yeah. Sure, I'd like to think Xander wouldn't be so rude as to waste time opening Giles' mail when he could've been helping plan our wedding, but _apparently_ \--"

Buffy stared at her, aghast. "That's enough! Xander and Dawn are missing; this isn't time to turn Bridezilla."

The other woman looked so affronted that for a moment Buffy wondered what she would do. But then Anya's mouth snapped shut and sank into a pout, and she crossed her hands over her chest, posture standoffish. "Fine."

Buffy turned to Giles. "Alright, we need research, and we need it now. Time travel explains everything--where Dawn and Xander are, and why Sunnydale's suddenly turning into Jurassic Park. So one of these books had better tell us how to undo it."

Giles nodded. "I'll see what I can dig up about this medallion. If it indeed transfered some kind of curse or--or completed a ritual of some kind, perhaps we can discover the way to undo it."

"Good."

Willow stepped forward, a bright smile on her lips. "And I know there was a book around here with an incantation for a time-space location swapping spell, so if I can track that one down again, that's all we'll need. No mysterious medallions necessary!" Buffy gave her a weak smile, trying and utterly failing to mirror her enthusiasm.

"Thanks, Will."

The witch reached out, placing a hand on Buffy's shoulder in a comforting gesture much like the one Tara had offered her earlier. "We'll get them back, Buff. We always do."

She nodded absently, trying to ignore the nagging worry in the back of her mind that kept bringing up the question of where--or _when_ \--Dawn and Xander were right now. Because if there were raptors left behind in their place, Buffy had a horrible feeling about exactly what kind of danger the two of them must be in.


	4. Chapter 4

"Damn it all!" Giles swore as he slammed his fifth book shut. "That one covered everything from the Urn of Osiris to the magical properties of sphinx whiskers, but not a single word about anything related to time travel." 

"Still better than mine," Spike grumbled, black-nailed fingers flipping idly through another tome. "This bugger's all convinced that messing with time's not even possible."

"Guess someone forgot to tell the dinosaurs that, then," Anya said dryly.

"Not to mention their victims."

On the there side of the table, Willow flipped a page of her book, her fingers never actually touching the paper. The magic drew Buffy's eye, and the Slayer found herself watching her best friend for a moment. Willow's eyes scanned the page, reading the material far quicker than Buffy could've managed herself (was that magic, too, she wondered, or just natural brainy-ness?). Then, quite suddenly, Willow's roaming eyes halted and narrowed, and Buffy watched her lips move silently as the conversation--well, complaining--droned on unheard in the background.

"I think I have something!" Buffy felt a flutter of excitement. "Give me a minute." As heads swiveled to look in her direction, Willow flipped rapidly through the book's pages, then stopped suddenly once she'd reached the back half of the tome. On the page in front of her was a large drawing easily recognizable even from Buffy's awkward angle; it was definitely the Chronos Medallion in all its ugly glory.

"What does it say?" Buffy urged.

"Hang on…" Willow's eyes moved rapidly over the text, and then she looked up at Buffy as she broke out into a wide grin. "This is good; this is really good. See, the medallion's not cursed or anything like that; it's just a conduit. And not just any conduit; it's specifically for time-space displacement spells, which was my whole idea in the first place!"

Before Buffy even had a chance to open her mouth, Anya's enthusiastic voice interrupted. "Well, that's great. This should be easy, then, right? All we have to do is put the medallion somewhere that the raptors will touch it, and Dawn and Xander will just zip right back."

Willow frowned, shaking her head. "That's not how it works. It's not imbibed with any permanent power of its own; giving it to those things now will just mean our conduit gets eaten--and possibly us, too. No, this thing just kind of… stores power, I guess? And, you know, focuses it? It must have been charged with a spell at some point, and Dawn and Xander must have triggered it by trying to take it out of the box." She cast a glance over at the offending cardboard rectangle, where it still sat innocuously on the shelf. "So that spell is done… which means we'll have to start from scratch." Her expression brightened again. "It'll be a bit of a challenge, but it should be fun!"

Still seated at Willow's side, Tara raised both brows. "Fun?" she repeated, and for a moment, Willow actually seemed a bit abashed. But before the witch had a chance to launch into what would surely be a babbling defense of herself, Buffy cut her off.

"Just get it done, okay? As quickly as you can. This has gone on too long already; those raptors are still out there terrorizing the town, and who knows what's happened to Dawn and Xander in all the time they've been gone."

"Right," Willow said, nodding, and Buffy didn't miss the way she seemed to turn her shoulder toward Tara in what looked like an obvious attempt to freeze out whatever argument might have been brewing. "You can count on me. Us."

Buffy had no reason to think otherwise, but then again, she had certainly learned how to worry over the last two years.

* * *

Xander held his breath behind the tree, his hand clamping down on Dawn's so tightly that he was actually worried he might hurt her. He had no idea if T. rex hearing was good enough that it even stood a chance of hearing them from so far away, but he wasn't prepared to take any chances; as it was, it might have already glimpsed them just in the brief moments before they'd thought to hide.

At his side, Dawn looked about as scared as he'd ever seen her. Even during the Glory business, when he'd seen her frightened and depressed and dejected and furious, he wasn't sure he'd seen this level of pure, unadulterated fear on her face. In an odd way, it actually made Xander feel a bit better; somehow, seeing her own vulnerability afforded him a confidence he wouldn't have felt otherwise. It was as if all the energy he would've wasted upon his own fear had been redirected toward his all-consuming need to keep her safe, just in the same way that he always felt more confident when Buffy called upon him to fight than when he was faced with the issues of his own life.

"What's it doing?" came Dawn's horrified whisper, and Xander realized with a dull shock that yes, one of them would have to check on the monster soon. Sure, it wouldn't have a chance of ever sneaking up on them--subtlety was never the forte of anything that weighed multiple tons, after all--but it would have to move eventually, and they would need to be sure that it was moving way from them. (And that when they finally moved, they were moving away from _it_.)

"I don't know," he muttered back to her. "There's no way we could've missed it if it moved, though… Maybe it didn't see us?" That was, he feared, too much to hope for.

"Check," she urged him, and he felt just a bit of his resolve crumble under the added pressure.

But he was the responsible one here, the adult. The one who'd (actually) been dealing with nightmares like this for five years. It was his job to take charge of this as surely as it was Buffy's job to take charge normally. So he let Dawn's hand slip from his once more, and he inched slowly toward the edge of the massive tree trunk--and peered around the side.

The gargantuan thing was still standing there in the same spot where they'd last seen it. Sure, it had only been a few minutes (though it felt like an eternity already), but shouldn't it have lumbered off by now, he wondered? Didn't it have anything better to do than stand there and intimidate them?

He felt Dawn's hand on the back of his shirt after a few seconds, and her long fingers twisted into the fabric so she could drag him backward when she apparently decided that he'd been exposed for too long.

"What did you see?" she asked as soon as his back was securely against the bark once more, and her hand slipped back into his. "Is it still there?"

He nodded. "Yeah. It doesn't seem to be doing anything, though; it wasn't even looking over here."

"Do you think we should try to run, then? Or will we just run into another one?"

It was a strong possibility. He had no idea if the creatures had their own jealously guarded territory, if they tolerated one another's presence, if they hunted animals as small as humans, or practically anything else about them, for that matter. How was he supposed to make a life-or-death decision with such little information?

"I don't think we should just take off," he said finally. "That would probably just attract its attention, and it might not have noticed us yet. I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. But... I think we can try to sneak off. If it didn't notice us flailing to get behind this tree, it probably won't notice us tiptoe away, either. What do you think? Wanna risk it?"

He glanced over at her, eager for her reply (part of him--the part that was still a chicken even after all these years--wanted her to say no, so that he could feel alright about deciding to simply wait there until someone else rushed in to save the day), and though she still looked absolutely terrified, there was a growing determination in the young woman's face. "I think we should. What other choice do we have?"

Xander nodded. "Alright. Are you ready?"

"I'll never be."

He could certainly sympathize. "Then let's go." Very carefully, he took a step away from the tree and turned; for a second, Dawn's fingers slipped away from his, but their hands reconnected the moment they were facing back toward the tree. They gripped one another tightly as they took another cautious step. Then another. Then another.

They were twenty steps away when they heard the roar, and Xander's heart leaped into his throat.

_Maybe it was roaring about something else. Maybe it had spotted some other dinosaur; maybe it hadn't noticed them at all. Maybe they could still--_

But Dawn's scream pierced the oppressive jungle air, and any hope Xander had of going on unnoticed shattered just the same. There was a single instant of silence when Xander found himself once again holding his breath, wishing harder than he'd ever wished before that they would not be spotted... and then the footsteps started up like thunder, Dawn screamed again, and Xander wrenched her forward as he launched into a sprint.

He knew it wouldn't last long even as he started running; it was so much bigger than them, so much more muscular and powerful, and almost certainly faster. The ground shook beneath their feet as they scrambled to escape, and when Dawn finally stumbled and collapsed onto the muddy, moss-ridden jungle floor, she brought Xander down with her.

If military guy still existed somewhere inside him, Xander would gladly give him all the credit for how quickly he reacted. He was back on his feet almost as soon as he'd been knocked off them, pushing himself away from Dawn and yelling at the top of his lungs. "Over here, you big dumb lizard!" His mouth seemed to be moving faster than his brain, to the point that he wasn't entirely sure why he was doing what he was doing. But even as he questioned himself, the answer became obvious: Dawn. He had to rescue Dawn.

Even if it cost him his life. Apparently.

As he jogged away from where she still lay on the ground, waving his arms and yelling whatever nonsense popped into his mind, Xander finally got his first good (if that was a word one could use in a situation like this) glimpse of what it looked like to have a fully grown Tyrannosaurus rex sprinting straight toward you. In a word, it was _petrifying_. What looked like fifteen feet of pure, towering death was racing toward him, and it would've only been taller if it were standing upright instead of running full-tilt toward him, its mouth of razor-sharp knives barreling in his direction.

He heard Dawn scream again somewhere in the distance, and he watched the T. rex's eyes swiveling in their sockets, obviously checking to see if she would make a better meal. He swore under his breath--if she seemed like easier food, she would be the one it chose--and then started running toward it, blood pounding as he knew that this was it. This was how he would die.

( _At least it meant he'd never have to look at another wedding binder again_ , he thought.)

Xander dodged away as it lunged toward him, feeling a surge of numb panic flood through his nerves as he narrowly missed it. He felt its breath on his skin, he was so close, and for a moment his body had clearly thought he was dead; his vision went white for a single instant, though his legs were still moving, and he nearly stumbled as his senses recovered a split second later.

And then, to his immense surprise, he heard Dawn's voice burst out of her as a roar, and his gaze shot in her direction. He almost couldn't believe his eyes.

Even as he ran away from the beast, Dawn was sprinting toward it, a huge branch in her hands. She waved it back and forth haphazardly, like someone trying to play baseball when they'd never even seen a bat or a ball before, let alone actually knew the rules of the game. But a few other details were what had Xander speechless: Dawn had stripped herself of her shirt, tied it tight around the end of the branch she was now thrashing through the air, and somehow managed to light the whole damn thing on fire.

She was rushing half-naked at a Tyrannosaurus rex with a torch made of her clothes, and Xander had no idea what he was supposed to do now.

The dinosaur seemed to be having similar thoughts. As soon as Dawn had started moving, its attention had shifted from Xander--who it could now tell was going to put up a fight and might be more hassle than he was worth--to her... but it had clearly seen fire before. Xander had never once in his life imagined what it would be like to see a _T. rex_ shy away from anything, but that's just what it did as Dawn race toward it, waving her weapon with a shrill, piercing battle cry.

It shifted backward, the ground shaking slightly as it moved one massive foot away from her--and then it turned, tail wiping through the air, and ran.

Xander whooped in triumph, completely forgetting himself for a moment, and rushed toward where Dawn stood in what could only be described as a weary variant of a battle pose. It was only as she gave him a wary look that he crashed back to his senses; she was standing there with a burning stick in her hands and nothing on her upper body but her bra. Now was not the time for a hug.

"That was _awesome_ ," he told her, dropping his gaze to the ground. "But, uh... You could've asked for my shirt instead."

"No time," she grunted, sounding just as uncomfortable as he felt.

"Right. Well, thanks for saving my life. Guess there's a bit of Slayer in you too, huh?" He glanced up, just for a second, and gave her a smile. She offered him a half-hearted grin of her own in return, but her eyes were on the branch still burning in her grasp.

"Just wish I knew how I was going to put this out."

Xander laughed. "Hang on to it for a bit, I'd say. If we run into any more dinosaurs, we might need it."

Dawn giggled. It was so absurd, this whole situation, and the thought of laughing about it seemed even more so. Within a few moments, they were both breathless, Dawn lost in a fit of giggles while Xander howled his mirth.

* * *

Willow looked nervous as she held the medallion up by its chain and stepped into the center of the circle they'd set up. White candles burned on the floor of the Magic Box, and the rest of the Scoobies stood beyond their borders, waiting for the witch among their ranks to begin her ritual.

But Willow was clearly hesitating. "What's wrong?" Buffy demanded, unable to keep the tension from her voice.

"Nothing," she dismissed, and then paused. "Well, it's just that I'm not sure I have enough power for this." Buffy's heart began to sink. "I mean, this is a time ritual. Even a dimension ritual is easier, and that takes two witches."

At Buffy's side, Anya shifted, apparently surprised. "Oh," she said, and heads turned quickly in her direction. "Well, I could help if you'd like."

Willow looked downright shocked. "You? I meant--"

"Yes me," Anya said, voice sharpening as her brow furrowed. "Why not? I was the one you did that dimension spell with, remember? And it worked."

"Not the way it was supposed to!" Willow protested. "You were trying to get your necklace, not my vampire doppelganger."

"I can still help. I _should_ help. It's my Xander who's missing."

("And Dawn," Spike reminded her.) 

Willow looked bewildered by the entire prospect of doing a spell with Anya's help. "I... I guess there wouldn't be any harm in it," she admitted, "and--and I do need the extra power. But I don't know if you're going to be enough, Anya. No offense." 

Anya looked offended regardless.

"I'll help," Tara offered, stepping forward into the circle. "Three is a powerful magical number; together, we should be able to pull it off."

"See?" Anya said, joining Tara and Willow in the middle of the candles. The circle was a bit cramped now, with the three of them standing there. "Listen to your girlfriend."

Willow took a deep breath, then let it out as a sigh. "Alright. But if something goes wrong..." She let the thought hang, and Buffy couldn't help but try to fill in the blanks. What would Willow do if the spell failed? What would _Buffy_ do? And what if the spell didn't just fail, but made things worse? What if--?

"Pull the candles back a bit," Willow instructed to no one in particular, and it was Spike who actually moved forward to obey. "Make sure the circle is wide enough that none of us accidentally step outside it during the ritual. I don't want to think about what might happen if we do." She lifted the medallion by its chain and slipped the gaudy golden thing around her head. It slid down around her neck, the medallion itself settling against her breast, and she reached out her hands to each of the two women standing in front of her.

Tara and Anya each took one as Spike finished his task and stepped away from the Circle, and then they grasped one another's hands, as well. Buffy watched with a fluttering heart, thoughts of doom still flitting about her mind. "I'm going to chant the incantation," Willow told the others. "You'll have to join in for the spell to work. But _don't_ mispronounce it. Do you think you can do it?" 

"We've all been listening to you practice for ten minutes now. Of course we can do it."

"Then I'm going to start." Willow shook her head, tossing her short red hair about her shoulders, and then angled her face up toward the ceiling.

Indecipherable words of a dead tongue spilled from her mouth, and Buffy felt goosebumps rising on her arms as she listened to first Anya and then Tara join the chant. Three feminine voices rang in harmony, and the onlookers each staggered backward as the spell started to pick up.

A gust of wind seemed to come from nowhere, fierce and cold; the candles flickered, Anya's skirt coming dangerously close to a nearby flame as the women's hair and clothes were blasted by the wind. Willow's voice only grew louder--and, oddly, _deeper_ \--as they chanted on, hands tightly interlocked. Above their heads, the fluorescent lights of the Magic Box flickered, and then a bulb burst.

All around them, a shimmering mist seemed to be filling the room, and it condensed around the circle of candles but didn't broach the barrier they made. Slowly, the mist started to swirl like liquid circling a drain, going faster and faster as the seconds ticked past, and a sudden thunderclap came from nowhere, its volume so loud and unexpected that Buffy nearly toppled. She caught herself with a hand on Spike's arm, and he helped her back up silently before turning his gaze back to the witches.

The lights flickered again, the wind howling around the shop--

\--and then the lights went out completely, and everything went still.

"Ow!" came Anya's indignant voice. "Someone's standing on my foot!"

"Anya?"

Xander's voice came as the biggest relief Buffy'd had since Spike carried Dawn off that tower, and it was only Willow's warning about breaking the circle that kept her from rushing forward to find her sister.

"Xander!" Anya gasped. "It worked! And you're not dead!"

"We're not?" came Dawn's dazed voice. "Could've fooled me. Why's everything dark?"

Willow's voice, calm and triumphant, floated through the darkness. "We can break the circle now. Giles, do you think you can get the lights back on?"

"Of course."

There were footsteps, many pairs of them, the most obvious being Giles' as he went to turn the lights back on. Buffy peered about in the darkness, trying to figure out where her sister had gone. "Dawn?"

"Buffy? Where are you?"

"Here," she said, and she heard someone shuffling in her direction.

Somewhere nearby, Spike laughed. "Wrong one, bit. Try that way."

Tentative fingers brushed against Buffy's arm. "Buffy?" 

She wasted no time in seizing her sister and pulling her into what was almost certainly a crushing embrace. "You scare me to death sometimes, Dawnie."

"Well, it's not _my_ fault stuff like this keeps happening!" Dawn protested, and Buffy hesitated as she noticed something odd.

"Dawn, why does it feel like--" The lights came back on, cutting her off and confirming her fears. "--you're naked?"

Her younger sister was standing there shirtless, and as heads swiveled in their direction, Buffy's own glare sought Xander. "Um, it's not what it looks like, if that helps anything?" Dawn offered.

"What does it _look_ like?" Buffy demanded, and even Anya look stricken as she pulled free of Xander's hug.

"Not that!" Xander exclaimed quickly. "It doesn't look like anything."

Pulling back from her sister's arms, Dawn rolled her eyes. "I had to make a torch. It was life or death; I'm fairly sure my modesty will recover."

"Here," Spike's voice interrupted them, and when Buffy glanced over, she was surprised to see him holding out his leather duster for her. Dawn looked as shocked as Buffy felt, and it was only when Spike shook it impatiently that she actually took it and started to slip it on. Even from where Buffy was standing, she could tell that it smell like cigarettes and even faintly of booze (and blood, she half-suspected), and its bulk dwarfed the teen completely. Dawn looked ridiculous... but it was still the sweetest thing she'd seen in a while.

"So..." Anya began, "we did it, then, right?"

Willow gave her a grin. "We definitely did it. Friends and family are back where they belong, so those dinosaurs should be, too."

"Good job, Will," Xander said enthusiastically. "Whatever you did, I doubt it was quite as impressive as fighting off a T. rex with a stick, but thanks for getting our butts back when they belong."

Willow's triumphant look faltered slightly. "You fought off a T. rex with a stick?"

Xander smiled, inclining his head toward where Dawn and Buffy were standing. " _I_ didn't."

Shocked, Buffy glanced up at her sister. "What?" she sputtered. "You did what?" Dawn gave her a bored look and crossed her arms over her chest. "We're gonna talk about this later."

As she pretended she didn't notice Spike giving Dawn a congratulatory wink, Buffy turned back to Willow. "So you're sure those things are gone? No more eviscerated civilians in our future?"

"Well, not eviscerated via dinosaur, no. I make no promises about other types of evisceration. It's the Hellmouth, after all." At Buffy's serious expression, she sobered. "Trust me, they're back where they belong. We're not going to have any more dinosaur-related issues. Or, hopefully, time travel problems."

"Good," Buffy said. "Then we'd all better head home and see if we can get some sleep. It's going to be dawn soon. The time, not the person."

"Right," Anya agreed from the other side of the circle of candles. She seized Xander's hand. "That means we only have an hour or two to have life-affirming victory sex."

"O-okay?" Wide-eyed, Xander let his soon-to-be wife pull him past the candles and toward the front door of the shop. "I'll, uh, see you guys tomorrow, then?"

"Today," Anya corrected, and the doorbell rang as they stepped outside.

"We'd better go, too," Tara said, glancing at her girlfriend.

Willow nodded, and then turned to Buffy. "We'll see you at home, okay?"

"Sure."

In the back of the room, Giles stepped silently through the open doorway. He looked like he was frowning, his eyes following Willow's head as she walked out the door and disappeared down the sidewalk.

"I'm glad to see you're alright, Dawn," he said. "Now, if you're all heading home, I think I'd best turn in myself."

"Sorry to keep you up all night," Dawn offered meekly, and Giles smiled at her.

"Not to worry. The shop will need to be closed for repairs anyway. The important thing is you're alright."

Buffy nodded to him. "G'night, Giles."

"Goodnight."

She ushered Dawn from the shop, careful to avoid the glass as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. The cigarette-and-alcohol smell clung to them like a cloud, following as surely as Spike himself did. Buffy glanced back at him. "Night."

"Take care of my leather."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Your jacket will be fine, Spike. Don't ruin the gesture."

He gave her a smirk that did absolutely nothing for her libido, thank you very much. "Alright, pet. See you both tomorrow night, yeah? I'd hate to get caught in the sun."

"Bye, Spike!" Dawn called as he headed off down the street. "And thanks for the coat!"

He gave her a firm wave over his shoulder, not even turning his head to glance back at them (probably because he thought that wouldn't be _cool_ ), and Buffy put her arm around Dawn's waist.

"Let's head home."


	5. Epilogue

The warehouse sat dark and barren. Massive metal shelving units filled the room, but they were almost entirely empty, serving no purpose but to further the spread of echoes about the place. The only echoes that could be heard tonight, though, were the determined footsteps of a slim, pale man as he marched toward the back of the enormous empty space.

Pressed against the further wall of the place was a massive wooden box, and the man eyed it appreciatively as he approached. He stopped in front of it and rapped his knuckles against the wood, listening as the creatures inside started rattling against the bars.

"Oh, relax," he told them after a moment, unable to keep the laughter from his voice. "You won't be in there long. I'll set up something nice for the two of you, something... a bit more like home. You'll live quite nicely until I'm ready to use you, rest assured." His palm swiped over the wood as if caressing the box--or the creatures inside--and then the man shook his head, turned on his heel, and walked back the way he came.

The box fell silent a few minutes after the echoes of his footsteps had dispersed, and the two raptors chained up behind the wood and the metal bars within settled down once more.

**Author's Note:**

> [Prompt me.](http://aftanith-writes.tumblr.com/submit)


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